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Since reporting the sad news The Herald’s Facebook page has been flooded with tributes to ‘an iconic landlord, a lovely man and a real gentleman’.

Read just a few of the tributes below followed by a report by The Herald celebrating Billy’s 70 birthday in March 2011.

Billy Holmes, who ran The Dolphin on the Barbican for almost 40 years

Anne Field: R.I.P Billy. I was only in the Dolphin a few weeks ago. I picked him up for over 9yrs while working for Towercabs, always a pleasure & an utter gentleman. Thoughts with his family & friends.

Malcolm Haggarty: An iconic landlord, a lovely man and a real gentleman. Billy your humour and kind nature will never ever be forgotten. Thank you for the many hours you spent serving your locals. RIP Bill

Rebecca Harris: RIP Billy! He was honestly one of the best people I’ve worked for! You will be truly missed

Heater Cooksley: I’ll raise a large wine glass for you tonight Billy  You’ll expect nothing less ☺️ A true heart of gold ❤️ Will miss you so much xxxxx

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In 2011 The Herald had a chat with Billy and found out how he became to be one of the city’s best known landlords.

He spoke to us about his family, his favourite drinks and what makes a good pub landlord. Read the original article in full below.

As ‘Plymouth’ as the steps and the gin – original story by Martin Freeman in 2011

AS WITH any city, Plymouth has its share of “official” tourist attractions.

Visitors take a stroll along the Hoe, peer over the Mayflower Steps and gaze at the sea life in the National Marine Aquarium.

But a living city is better defined by the ports of call that don’t get the headlines in the glossy guides, the everyday places.

In the Barbican there’s Cap’n Jaspers, of course, and, a short stroll back along Southside Street is a pub with a reputation that has made it as much a part of the historic Barbican as the Mayflower Steps and the Gin Distillery?

The latter tribute came in a recent editorial comment in The Herald about The Dolphin and the man who has been behind the bar for 35 years, marking his 70th birthday. So, how does it feel to be referred to in such glowing terms?

There might be a few Plymothians who have never ventured through the blue doors and could be wondering what the fuss is all about.

First, here’s what it isn’t. The sign says ‘hotel’ but the rooms above are where Billy, not guests, live.

It isn’t a heritage pub, either. There’s a solidity and a feel of at least a couple of centuries of tradition, but architects don’t go into raptures about what’s inside or out.

There is a welcoming real fire but no signature fireplace.

The bar is the kind you want to lean on rather than stand back from for fear of breathing on acres of brass and glass.

There’s stained glass but nothing that compares with many a Victorian-era pub in cities elsewhere.

I described all of that years ago to a visiting American friend when I said I’d be taking her to a great Plymouth pub for a drink only; we’d have to eat elsewhere.

“Why don’t we go somewhere more comfortable and we can eat and have a drink in one place?” she said, before we walked in.

“Ah, I see,” she said when she sat down. Neat.”

Neat as in US-speak for ‘I like it a lot in an understated way’, not as in tidy.

In fact, “rough and ready” was how most people used to describe The Dolphin, which explained why there were murmurs of discontent a year ago when Billy unveiled plans for the place to be spruced up. He even posed in The Herald with the plans to reassure concerned Plymothians.

Fortunately, my US friend would still recognise the place, post-sprucing. There’s a new floor, brighter decor and a couple of other touches.

She’d probably not notice much difference from when she called in a decade ago – apart from when she used an essential part of any pub’s offering.

“Jeez! The toilets!” she’d said, crinkling up her nose after a visit.

The ladies’ and gents’ have had their second makeover in the space of seven years.

“I think people like the place because it hasn’t changed hardly,” says Billy, settling into a seat on the customer side of the bar, cup of tea in hand.

“It’s not much different from when I first came in nearly 40 years ago.”

You only need to hear him say that to know that Plymouth didn’t used to be his home.

Although you might need to hear Billy say that twice: his southern Irish accent can make his occasionally soft-to-a-mumble voice indecipherable first time round.

He pitched up at The Dophin first when his father, also Billy, became the licensee in the early 1970s. Back another generation there was a Devon connection.

“One of my grandfathers, William, was from Torbay,” explains Billy. “There are quite a few Holmeses down there.

“He was in the Royal Navy and was stationed in Cork at one stage (in the pre-Irish independence days) met and married an Irish girl.

“My father and his sister used to go over to Torbay for holidays so they were used to spending time in Devon and there was that connection.”

Billy junior grew up in the town of Bandon in County Cork and had no thought of spending time in pubs other than for social purposes when he left school. He worked on a farm and then for a bottling plant connected to the Beamish and Murphy’s breweries.

“Lack of work brought me to Britain, as it did my father,” says Billy. “Ireland was so different then for work and there was an abundance in Britain. There never seemed to be any unemployment here then.

“I was a labourer working on power station sites for a few years and then I worked for Mars, the sweet people, in Slough, on the (production) lines, making the chocolate bars.

“It was a good place to work, with no class distinction. The bosses and the workers all ate in the same canteen. The big boss, John Mars, would come over on a visit from America and would sit with the workers eating his dinner. It had that family feel – and it’s still family owned.”

After Mars it was back on the power station building sites. “There was never a problem finding work then (the mid 1960s). You’d finish one job and go straight to the next: Oldbury (a nuclear power station in Gloucestershire) was being built and the M4, M5, Severn Bridge.”

There was work in Plymouth, too, on the fleet maintenance building in the Dockyard.

Billy senior was licensee of The Dolphin with his wife, Bet, Billy junior’s step mother, who had taken the place on from her own mother.

“I’d come in the place for a drink and I enjoyed the company. The customers in those days were a lot of fishermen, all characters.

“There was always bickering with each other in good fun. You never stopped laughing with them.

“They (Dad and Bet) were always trying to get me behind the bar and I said I didn’t want to. Then I tried it – and I loved it.”

Sadly, Billy senior was only licensee for three years; he died from cancer in 1976.

So young Billy began working regularly, helping out his step-mother and taking on the license 27 years ago.

Why, though, did a job he didn’t fancy suddenly become the job he loved?

“This place,” says Billy, with a shrug. “It’s always had a lot of characters, good regulars.

“There’s not many fisherman now. They were quite an attraction themselves. People would come down to the Barbican to buy the fish and watch it being sold, before the old fish market closed.”

The district itself was a lot less spruced up in the 1970s and popular with another group who added to the character of the pub. Artists who lived or worked in and around the Barbican were regulars, the best known being Beryl Cook.

‘The People’s Artist’ and her husband John enjoyed a drink, a chat, and watching the fellow drinkers who inspired many of her cheeky paintings.

“She’d sit drinking her gin and tonic and doing a bit of sketching. She loved a chat; a lovely person.”

Beryl was famous for her chubby subjects who like a drink. Billy has the character and the stature to match: he might have stepped out of one of Beryl’s paintings.

“I featured in quite a few,” he says, beaming. “That was fabulous.”

The pub itself, inside and out, appeared in several of Beryl’s works and copies hang on the walls. In 1996, several artist regulars organised an exhibition devoted solely to The Dolphin and Billy. Beryl and Brian Pollard were among them, and gallery owner Bill Hodges added a personal touch with a cartoon of the landlord wearing a crown and styled King Billy: that still hangs behind the bar.

In 2004 came two award-winning animated films of Beryl’s characters, Bosom Pals, which aired on BBC1. That earned Billy the possibly unique distinction of being a real-life landlord portrayed on screen. He was voiced by Timothy Spall.

Beryl died in 2008 and is sorely missed by Billy but her husband John remains a regular – so much so that he was consulted before the refurbishment went ahead.

With three-and-a-half decades of experience behind him in a landmark pub, Billy is well qualified to comment on changes that the licensed trade has gone through. But he isn’t one to sound off.

“You just get used to them, the changes, the longer hours and all-day drinking. We open at 10am and close at midnight on weekends.

“We don’t do much music, well not more than half a dozen times a year, and we don’t do the sports bar thing because that’s not us. People come in here because they want a drink and a chat.

“And we don’t do food. What would be the point with all the takeaways in the Barbican? People come in here with their fish and chips and have a drink, and that’s fine.”

Given the chance to complain about the competition from supermarkets selling cut-price booze, he shrugs his shoulders. Young binge drinkers are certainly not Billy’s market. Real ale drinkers are; with at least eight on tap, The Dolphin is popular with those who like their beer ‘live’.

“I wish they’d reduce the parking restrictions,” is his only real gripe. “Things were better when the Barbican was choc-a-bloc. But people can’t come in and find a short-term parking space. That puts visitors off.”

In short, business has been hard for the last few years, especially since the recession, “but the last few months have been pretty good”.

When he is not working, you’ll probably find Billy enjoying a drive or perhaps visiting his daughter, Theresa, who lives near Bristol, or socialising in the pub he runs.

“Plymouth Gin and water is my drink. Chilean red wine, too. You wouldn’t have had that in the 1970s,” he adds, nodding at a special offer on Rioja. “There were only about two wines you could get. Remember Hirondelle?

“You know, the first pub I used to drink in in Plymouth, the Stonehouse Tavern, didn’t used to allow women in.”

What hasn’t changed is what makes a pub: the landlord.

“You have got to be a good listener,” he says. “You have to be very sympathetic at times and, like a doctor or a psychiatrist, you have to keep it to yourself.”

Which is what Billy is: more of a listener than a talker, helping explain further why he continues to enjoy the job at 70, five years past normal retirement age.

But has he thought about giving up? “Not at all,” says Billy. “I’ll do this job until they carry me out feet first in a box.”